This invention relates to a plastic-capped decorative article and methods of making same, and more particularly to methods of making emblems having a decorative embedment encapsulated in a cured plastic resin.
Decorative plaques and emblems are widely used throughout a number of industries, including the automotive and appliance industry. Many of these decorative emblems are formed on metal or plastic substrates onto which a liquid plastic resin is cast. The plastic resin cures to form a convex or positive meniscus-shaped cap over the substrate which gives a lens effect to the printed decorative indicia on the substrate. Such emblems are conventionally adhered to their intended surface, such as an automobile or applicance body, utilizing a pressure sensitive adhesive coated on the back of the emblem substrate.
Also known generally is the concept of encapsulating an article in plastic by casting, partially curing, inserting the article, casting again, and completing the cure. For example, in Brody, U.S. Pat. No. 3,660,211, the article is a metal foil of a multicolored iridescent body embedded between two layers of a polyester resin; in Smith, U.S. Pat. No. 3,312,197, the article is a facsimile of a coin embedded between a transparent and an opaque, colored plastic resin material; and in Miori, U.S. Pat. No. 4,067,947, the article is embedded between two different layers of plastic resin material. Also, Bree, U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,160, discloses a method of encapsulating a decorative foil shape in a preformed bezel by casting a plastic resin material over the foil shape.
However, previous encapsulation processes resulted in relatively thick inflexible articles and involved several manufacturing steps which were relatively costly. Conventional plastic-capped decorative emblems require a self-supporting substrate of metal, paper, or plastic onto which the plastic resin is cast. The cost of such substrates represents a significant portion of the cost of the emblem. Additionally, many procedures form the emblems using die cutting operations which results in the waste of large portions of the substrate material which is discarded as scrap.
Accordingly, the need exists in the art for a method of making a plastic-capped decorative article with embedded foil shape which provides a relatively thin and flexible article and which is relatively inexpensive to manufacture.